Apple Store locations will start selling the iPad 2 at 5 p.m., as will AT&T, Best Buy, Target, Verizon Wireless, Walmart and other Apple resellers. Ordering at Apple’s online store begins at 1 a.m. (For those of you headed to Austin for South by Southwest, Apple intends to open a pop-up store in the city’s downtown, according to the American-Statesman newspaper’s website.)

Apple’s new iPad costs the same as the original, ranging from $499 for a model with Wi-Fi access and 16 gigabytes of storage to $829 for 64GB models that can connect to AT&T and Verizon Wireless’ 3G networks.

iPad advantage? According to our friends at The Associated Press, Apple is maintaining a price advantage over makers of rival tablets, including some that run Google’s Android operating system. Motorola’s Xoom, for example, costs about $800 — or $600 for Verizon customers who commit to a two-year contract. Apple makes its own A5 processor (based on designs from ARM Holdings) for the iPad 2, while Motorola buys a chip from Nvidia, according to the AP report.

In a blog post today, Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps described the current and upcoming Android tablets and other iPad rivals as “solid products with fatally flawed product strategies.”

“In short, competing tablets are too expensive, and can’t match the Apple Store as a channel,” she noted.

However, she suggested one possible threat to Apple: a Linux or Android tablet from Seattle online retail giant (and Kindle maker) Amazon. Such a device would offer “easy access to Amazon’s storefront (including its forthcoming Android app store) and unique Amazon features like one-click purchasing, Amazon Prime service, and its recommendations engine,” she wrote.

For now, though, Apple will have an 80 percent share of the U.S. tablet market.

But should you buy one? Here’s what some reviewers have to say:

Rachel Metz of The Associated Press: “With the original iPad, Apple brought an attractive, easy-to-use tablet computer to the masses at a reasonable price. “… With Friday’s release of the iPad 2, Apple is pulling further ahead, with improvements that make an already excellent tablet even more enticing.”

Walt Mossberg of All Things Digital and The Wall Street Journal: “The iPad 2, in my view, offers an excellent balance of size, functionality and price, and keeps Apple ahead in the tablet race, at least for now. However, unless you are desperate for the cameras or feel you are laboring under the greater bulk of the original model, I don’t advise that iPad owners race to get the new version.”

David Pogue of The New York Times: “On paper, Apple didn’t do much. It just made the iPad one-third thinner, 15 percent lighter and twice as fast. “… Just that much improvement in thinness, weight and speed transforms the experience.”

Dell advances, thanks to Apple? According to a report today from El Segundo industry researcher IHS iSuppli, Dell returned to its No. 2 spot in the global PC market in the fourth quarter. Acer, which had climbed to No. 2 in the third quarter of 2009 on the strength of its netbook offerings, fell back to No. 3.

“With momentum for consumer PCs waning and in light of growing competition from media tablets, Acer’s gains have been reversed,” Matthew Wilkins, IHS’s principal analyst for computing platforms, said in an e-mail today.

Palo Alto social networking powerhouse Facebook has surged to become the tech industry’s most powerful brand — at least according to a study this week by Liquid Agency, a downtown San Jose branding agency, and Socratic Technologies, a San Francisco market research firm.

The two firms ranked tech companies and their products on four factors: awareness, consideration, preference and purchase intent.

“Social media is no longer a trend,” Martha Bowman, Liquid’s director of brand strategy, noted in the report. “It is part of our everyday lives, and it is firmly entrenched in our cultural ethos.”

As for Facebook, it “has become one of the most valuable brands in the world,” Bowman wrote.

Mountain View Internet juggernaut Google and Amazon were designated the most powerful tech brands in previous years. This year, Amazon was No. 2, followed by San Jose software maker Adobe Systems, Google and Santa Clara chip behemoth Intel.

Conspicuously missing from the Top 5 was Apple, which we’ve been led to believe has a very powerful brand.

In an e-mail, Bowman explained that the study “measures a brand’s performance in its particular category — against its specific competitors. Apple today is a diversified company that we measure in nine different categories. While the Apple brand is well-loved and a strong competitor overall, it does not dominate in any one category to the degree Facebook does in social media or Intel in semiconductors.”

Apple’s brand impact has grown significantly since the agency’s first study in 2007, she noted. Then, “Apple was found in just three categories — today the brand’s footprint extends to nine categories, many in which it is setting the pace.”

Tech headlines

LinkedIn: The Mountain View professional networking upstart wants its members to check in everyday.

Today, it announced the beta launch of LinkedIn Today, “which delivers the day’s top news, tailored to you based on what your connections and industry peers are reading and sharing,” Liz Reaves Walker, a senior product manager at LinkedIn, said in a blog post.

The site shows news items shared by LinkedIn contacts. Members also can “follow” various industries and news sources — and share updates between their Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.

AOL: The online pioneer — which recently bought The Huffington Post for $315 million — has cut 900 jobs, including 200 in the U.S., according to The Associated Press. About 700 of those jobs are in India, and 300 will be shifted to other companies.

“Angry Birds”: Rovio Mobile — the Finland-based creator of the popular birds-vs.-pigs game — has received $42 million in venture funding from investors including Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom and Palo Alto venture capital firm Accel Partners, according to a Bloomberg News report. (We haven’t downloaded “Angry Birds” yet, but thanks to Bloomberg, we’ve learned the birds have a reason to be angry: Apparently, the pigs have stolen their eggs.)

Real estate update

Zillow: The Seattle online real estate site is known for its “Zestimate” home values. (In this market, considering how far “underwater” our home value is compared with our mortgage, we try not to look.) Now, Zillow is adding estimated monthly rents to its site as a tool for would-be landlords and tenants.

“Buyers and renters are not exclusive categories — many people are considering both options when shopping for a new home. Similarly, many would-be sellers in today’s housing market are considering whether to become landlords rather than sell at a loss,” Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff said today in a news release. “We created Rent Zestimates to empower people with information and data to make the right real estate decision for them.”

Mortgage rates: They were steady this week, with the average on 30-year fixed loans edging slightly higher to 4.88 percent, according to mortgage giant Freddie Mac. That’s up from 4.87 percent last week, but down from 4.95 percent a year earlier.

Rates on other popular loans were either the same as last week or within 0.02 percentage points.

And the widely watched Standard & Poor’s 500 index: Down 24.91, or 1.9 percent, to 1,295.11.

Check in weekday afternoons for the 60-Second Business Break, a summary of news from Mercury News staff writers, The Associated Press, Bloomberg News and other wire services. Contact Frank Russell at 408-920-5876. Follow him at Twitter.com/mercspike.